


Adrift

by omg_wtf_yeah



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omg_wtf_yeah/pseuds/omg_wtf_yeah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John goes back to Earth in Outcast, he remembers why he left in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adrift

It wasn't just the funeral, or finding out that his father was dead that made him feel lost. Growing up within the constraints of his parents' demands, John he hadn't felt at home, even in his own skin, let alone in his father's myriad homes.

As John got older, a scrawny kid with a crown of cowlicks, he learned to play it off like it was nothing. There was no better camouflage than a high school football jersey and no better armor than a laidback grin.

John still felt it inside - that he didn't belong, that what was happening was temporary, that he was biding his time until the real thing came along. The Air Force helped. Being _part_ of something helped, and he really felt then that he knew who he was. He formed his identity outside of his father's expectations and John's loss at his mother's death. John loved flying; he loved being part of a team.

Iraq and the blackmark shattered the easiness he'd cultivated. John couldn't go back there but his mind couldn't leave it behind, and as long as he remembered, it hung over his head. Antarctica was his punishment but at least it gave him breathing room. It gave him a blank slate, even if it didn't give him a new start. In Antarctica, he'd gone to ground and he’d waited.

It changed with the chair. It changed when Atlantis lit up for him, and when he built a team. Every day in Pegasus confirmed that he’d made the right choice in deciding to come there. Atlantis gave him a family of the kind he'd never had. They were a family that John chose and who chose him, who would continue to choose him, and who would never let him down.

The moment he and Ronon left the mountain and saw the world outside, John remembered everything. He remembered being the kid who was lost and he remembered being the man who'd lost everything. John's heart throbbed with grief but also because they were lightyears from home.

Ronon and he checked into the motel where someone at the SGC had booked them rooms and John laid down on the scratchy comforter in his room. He closed his eyes and exhaling slowly, sensing the difference in the air on Earth. John glanced sidelong at the red numbers on the face of the clock on the nightstand and started counting the hours till they could walk through the gate again and it would take them home.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [Comment_fic](http://comment_fic.livejournal.com/) prompt, "SGA, Any original expedition member, Earth is not home."


End file.
